Best web search APIs for AI agents

An agent that answers questions about the live web needs a search API. Pricing is per search (sometimes by search depth) rather than per page. This page ranks them on what is published and notes where the cheapest option has a catch.

Prices checked 2026-10-16. Prices only: we have not benchmarked success rate, speed or output quality, so treat this as a cost shortlist, not a verdict.

What this workload needs

Results an LLM can use directly: snippets or full-page content, not just links.
Search depth: instant, standard and deep or advanced variants can differ several-fold in price.
Rate limits and QPS for agent loops, which we list on vendor pages but do not price.
MCP or tool integrations if your agent framework supports them.

Cost shortlist

Browserbase: about $119/month at 100,000 requests (Parallel Fast). Tends to fit: Agents that must click, log in and fill forms. Watch-out: Pay for browser time, not pages: slow pages cost more. MCP: Yes.
Exa: about $400/month at 100,000 requests (Instant search). Tends to fit: Semantic/neural search for agents and coding assistants. Watch-out: Contents and summaries bill separately from search. MCP: Yes.
Brave Search API: about $500/month at 100,000 requests (Search). Tends to fit: Agent grounding with an independent index. Watch-out: Card required for the free plan. MCP: Yes.
Hyperbrowser: about $500/month at 100,000 requests (All plans). Tends to fit: Cheap browser hours and a built-in Fetch API. Watch-out: Proxy data at $10/GB bills on top of browser time. MCP: Yes.

The shortlist is the four lowest published-price estimates at 100,000 requests a month for ai/agent search query. It is rule-based (cheapest first) and not influenced by affiliate status.

AI/agent search query: estimated monthly cost at example volumes

AI/agent search query: vendors with the lowest published-price estimates (published rows only; shown vendors appear among the five cheapest at one or more volumes)
Vendor	10,000 / month	100,000 / month	1,000,000 / month
Browserbase	$29.00 Parallel Fast	$119 Parallel Fast	$1,019 Parallel Fast
Exa	$40.00 Instant search	$400 Instant search	$4,000 Instant search
Brave Search API	$50.00 Search	$500 Search	$5,000 Search
Hyperbrowser	$50.00 All plans	$500 All plans	$5,000 All plans
Tavily	$80.00 Pay as you go	$500 Growth	$8,000 Pay as you go

Partial or estimated, not ranked: Jina Reader (lower bound; see its page).

No usable published price for this request type: Firecrawl, Apify, Bright Data, Oxylabs, ScraperAPI, ZenRows, Scrapfly, SerpApi, Zyte, Crawl4AI, ScrapingBee, Steel. They are not ranked rather than guessed.

URL to LLM-ready content: estimated monthly cost at example volumes

URL to LLM-ready content: vendors with the lowest published-price estimates (published rows only; shown vendors appear among the five cheapest at one or more volumes)
Vendor	10,000 / month	100,000 / month	1,000,000 / month
Firecrawl	$83.00 Standard (annual billing)	$83.00 Standard (annual billing)	not enough data
Exa	$10.00 Contents (per content type)	$100 Contents (per content type)	$1,000 Contents (per content type)
Tavily	$16.00 Pay as you go	$160 Pay as you go	$1,600 Pay as you go

Partial or estimated, not ranked: Jina Reader (assumption-based estimate; see its page).

No usable published price for this request type: Apify, Bright Data, Oxylabs, ScraperAPI, ZenRows, Browserbase, Scrapfly, SerpApi, Zyte, Crawl4AI, ScrapingBee, Brave Search API, Hyperbrowser, Steel. They are not ranked rather than guessed.

Open the calculator with your own volume to compare all vendors side by side.

How to choose

Use the cheapest variant that answers your queries: compare instant/basic search before advanced.
Watch rows marked component only or lower bound: they exclude other charges or are a stated minimum.
If the agent also reads pages, add the content-extraction price (second table).

Read before deciding. Estimates use each vendor's published plans; component-only, lower-bound and assumption rows are flagged and not ranked with fully published prices. Free tiers are not subtracted. Confirm on the vendor's pricing page. See methodology.

Related comparisons

Other use-case guides

FetchIndex has an affiliate relationship with Firecrawl; it does not change prices, rankings or caveats (disclosure). This page contains no affiliate links.